


bitter sweet

by themorninglark



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Slight post-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 08:11:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6186991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <strong>
    <em>(ambient.)</em>
  </strong>
</p><p>

In which Kunimi blends into the background, like elevator music, and Tsukishima's a chance encounter by the watercooler.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bitter sweet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [agletbaby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/agletbaby/gifts).



> For Catrin, who gave me many wonderful prompts that indulged my tendencies towards gen ♥ I hope you like this!  
> Title is from Sawako's wonderful (and yes, ambient) ["bitter sweet" album](https://youtu.be/Be5KhGkbqeA?list=PL2-M3U3OY8wSp1F1yxqMN1kdKRoEbKh6C).
> 
> and with thanks to Winny for the beta and encouragement :)

 

 

 

There's always time for _salted caramel_.

That's what Kunimi thinks, the tip of the spoon cold on his tongue; it's become a pleasantly effortless matter of habit for him, stopping by the same ice cream shop he always does, placing the same order.

Even in his inattention, he notices when Kindaichi blushes at the cute girl behind the cash register, and he smiles to himself. 

_well._

_another day, another failed flirtation._

It's unremarkable, in a way he's grown accustomed to, chameleonlike. 

Seijou isn't a bad place to be. Kunimi hadn't bothered to think too much about it, had picked it, pretty much, by default, because Kitagawa Daiichi players went to Seijou and there wasn't any reason for him not to, but the rest of it off-court suits him fine as well. It's not too far from the station, in an average neighbourhood with the requisite _combini_ down the street, run by an _ojiisan_ who's been around for what seems like forever. 

And Kunimi's already marked out his new routine, that sunrise, sundown span of twenty-four hours: in careful pencil lines and a minimum of eraser dust.

On this day, they have math homework, and chemistry, and a history essay he could probably write in his sleep. Kindaichi will tear his hair out over one or all of the above. Kunimi will make a succinct, and, likely, abortive attempt to explain, and at seven o'clock he will excuse himself for dinner at home. His mother is making _matsutake gohan_ tonight.

So the afternoon goes on, a low hum in his mind's ceaseless, careful tides, shifting as they walk down the pavement. Minutes will pass - hours - _seasons_ -

Kunimi sidesteps the fallen spring leaves, lands, noiseless, on dry ground and slowly savours his ice cream.

 

 

There's always time for everything.

 

 

 

**_ambient (in search of)_ **

 

Past midnight, he curls up in an oversized chair. The lights in his room are off. 

It's quiet outside, all through the house, the dim, darkly moonlit kind of quiet that presses in softly from all sides like an oppressive, husky whisper, and by the electric-pale glow of his desk lamp, Kunimi flicks over to another tab. 

He scrolls aimlessly through a collection of playlists tagged _ambient_.

_suburban ghosts._  
_thirty one.  
_ _inching oneself forward from a cold horizon._

_ambient (part 3)._

Kunimi clicks _play_ on the last one, if for no other reason than the fact that it has a fuss-free title. True enough, it does exactly what it says on the lid, and with a faint stirring of interest, Kunimi's drifting gaze lands on the creator's name.

_tsukishima kei_.

_how fitting_ , he thinks. That guy _would_ be the sort to give himself the most straightforward of handles.

In the silence, the beat flows, smooth and steady, like ice in a cool glass on a summer's day.

Kunimi taps the heart to _like_ _ambient (part 3)_ and adds it to a collection called _night sounds_.

When the playlist reaches its end, recedes and fades into the white noise of _one AM_ , he even goes the extra mile to wander over to _tsukishima kei_ 's profile, in search of _part 1_ and _part 2_.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Their paths happen to cross at the watercooler, the first time they meet. It seems apt in retrospect. It's an accidental kind of place, after all, when it comes to _encounters_ ; a place of coming, and going.

On that day, Kunimi tugs his vest off his head and heads out right after the teams bow and say: _thank you for the game_. It's the kind of long afternoon that drags, and he was a little bit relieved, secretly, to retreat to the bench, shore himself up against his private assessment of the game.

The air in the gym is simmering, still, not quite _heated_ yet -

Just creeping up on them, slow and unrelenting.

From his spot on the sidelines, Kunimi had pressed a cool bottle into his neck, kept his level gaze. It hadn't escaped his notice that Kageyama's changed - that he's starting to learn, in his way, to get along with others at last.

_Except for one -_

And he's walking down the corridor now, the tall middle blocker with the glasses.

Kunimi swallows his mouthful of water.

He straightens, shoots him the briefest of glances. To his surprise, the glasses guy's frowning lightly as he comes up, tilts his head; lets out a _hmmm_ that's halfway casual, halfway loaded.

"You're one of Kageyama's old teammates," he says to Kunimi, without preamble.

It's not something that requires a confirmation.

Kunimi steps away from the watercooler, and nods anyway.

"Hmm. So... I guess you know how he is."

Kunimi sizes him up in an instant, and his thought's like an echo. 

_hmm._

He wears his unspoken sneer in his voice, laced with a blasé kind of insouciance, like he doesn't really care, one way or another. Like he is perfectly detached, and perfect in his awareness that this, too, shall pass, this throwaway strand of a conversation with Kunimi. Like the afternoon. Like the game they've just concluded.

Like it's all so very terribly tiresome to him, but - somewhere in the velvet undertone of his voice -

Kunimi, in spite of himself, smiles.

(A _salted caramel smile_ , not entirely sweet.)

"Yeah. I know," he says. "We gave him that nickname."

When Glasses Guy smiles back, there's the edge.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He doesn't learn his name for a while, because Oikawa, when debriefing, gives everyone nicknames of his own. _Chibi-chan. Captain-san. Glasses-kun._

So _Glasses-kun_ he is in Kunimi's catalogue, the one that sits in that nebulous space he might not ever revisit, but which, if pressed to label, he would have called _persons of interest_.

"Glasses-kun," declares Oikawa, with a dismissive wave of his hand, "has no resolve."

Matsukawa knits his thick eyebrows, minces no words telling Oikawa how scary it is that he can pick _that_ up, just from coming into the game at the end.

Oikawa preens a little and gets socked in the temple by Iwaizumi.

Kunimi, privately, neither agrees nor disagrees; there's a reflexive kind of thread to Oikawa's judgement, one that runs fine and subtle through Kunimi's own heart. To say that Glasses-kun lacked resolve would be to admit the same in himself, probably, or - perhaps, his past selves -

He lets the thought slip from his mind, like water off his back, and moves on.

 

 

 

**_ambient (part 3)_ **

 

It's not like he's practised it or anything.

It's just that he's become _comfortable_ , being the elevator music, so when Hanamaki sets him a good toss and reaches out for a high five afterwards, it takes Kunimi a good few seconds to process that it's _him_ he's reaching out to.

 

 

On this day, he goes home, turns down the lights and sleeps late again.

 

 

And on another day: 

Kunimi props his chin up on his hand, taps his pencil idly on his desk. He stares out of the window aimlessly, marks another cross in a mental calendar.

From his seat, he has a clear view of the bicycle parking, the asphalt, warming in the midday sun. The shadow of the wisteria tree is short, the flowers blooming, a pale purple blush that sways, lightly, in the barest hint of a breeze.

June's nearly upon them.

Less than a fortnight away from Inter-high preliminaries, Kunimi isn't particularly worried, for a myriad of reasons; foremost of which is that it isn't really _his_ job to worry, but also, there's the slow and inexorable difference of _today_ \- of circumstances that have changed -

Kunimi's mind pauses to dwell on _rifts_ , cracks in an old, familiar concrete. They're someone else's problem, now.

Idly, he wonders how he's doing. He doesn't think on it for too long. They'll pass each other in some corridor soon, anyway.

 

 

* * *

 

 

There's a pleasing symmetry to their second meeting.

The watercooler proves, again, to be a convenient kind of nexus; behind him, there's a blur of _orange_ and _black_ whizzing past before Kunimi has time to turn around, and he sees a tiny figure whip into the bathroom down the hall.

Trailing behind him, a dry cough and measured footsteps, an eloquent eyeroll -

" _Tsukishima!_ "

Kunimi paints himself into the corridor, into shades of neutral off-white as Kageyama comes into view. He looks pissed off. He always looks pissed off.

"Where's Hinata? Did he go to the toilet _again_?"

Tsukishima pauses. He throws a look over his shoulder at Kageyama, and his gaze, behind his lenses, is shaded in glass and refractions that distort, shift.

"I don't know. He's _your_ partner, isn't he? Do I look like his minder?"

Ignoring Kageyama's frown, he walks to the watercooler.

Kunimi, passing by, inclines his head. Just a little.

Tsukishima nods back, curt and cursory, and turns to drink.

They do not exchange words, this time. It's an overcast day, and the gymnasium's corridors, dimly lit as they are, are grey with a kind of atmospheric foreboding. They might face each other soon. They might not. Karasuno's erratic still, Kunimi knows, and as for Seijou, _well_.

Kunimi does not worry, but neither does he look too far ahead.

There's no predicting anything in sport and life. There's their senses, and reality: what they see, what they reach out and hold for themselves, tangible.

 

 

* * *

 

 

This is the reality of Kunimi Akira, and he maps it out himself, in neat lines across the atlas of his life, because he doesn't trust anyone else to do it.

The moment, fleeting, when the toss comes his way -  
and he jumps.

The number of blockers on the other side, the number of steps he'll have to take, to reach the falling ball. _is it worth it? is it too near? too far?_

The plays and possibilities he weighs up in his mind. The way they melt away in a split second when _one_ of them comes to pass, and all the others become yesterday's irrelevancies.

And these realities wind on, ceaseless; if he breathes too roughly, they'll slip away, if he doesn't breathe at all, if he stays just as he is, they'll etch themselves deep into him, and there will never be room for anything else, anything as nebulous and indefinable as _maybes_ and _could have beens_ and _hope_.

And after all that, it fades into the familiar again: 

Sendai's scenery, mountains and bridges and train tracks that criss-cross over themselves in the distance, and overhead, crows, flying.

Kunimi leans his forehead against a scratched plexiglass window, thinks:

Well, tomorrow's another day.

 

 

It'll be summer, soon.

 

 

 

**_ambient (part 2)_ **

 

Stepping out from the shelter of the station and into the sudden, dazzling sunlight, Kunimi comes to a standstill and holds out his hand, palm upraised.

_This is inconvenient._

Another drop of rain falls to join the first.

He drops his arm back to his side, retreats, for a moment, and reaches into the pocket of his jeans for his phone.

Behind him, the next train pulls up, and amidst the slow shuffle of footsteps at the gantries and the exit, the little intakes of breath, murmurs of _do you have an umbrella?_ , Kunimi doesn't _see_ the oncoming shadow so much as he senses it crossing his line of sight, from where it's hovering somewhere around the concrete ground in front of his sneakers.

"Oh. It's you."

Kunimi, text half-composed, glances up.

Tsukishima lowers his headphones and makes a small _tch_ sound as he looks out at the sudden drizzle.

"Hi," says Kunimi. "Tsukishima... right?"

Tsukishima saunters closer. "Right. Kunimi from Aoba Johsai. You have a good memory."

Kunimi doesn't let out the low hum of surprise at the back of his throat. It goes down easy, tastes like rainwater, bland and inoffensive and kind of cloudy.

Tsukishima smirks lightly anyway, tells him, "I remember your name. Kageyama seems to think you're smart."

In the absence of any better response, Kunimi says, "Oh," and stops there.

He's not sure it's a compliment, in all honesty, coming from someone like Kageyama, and Tsukishima seems to feel the same, so Kunimi takes it for what it is. A casual remark. The kind that rolls, carelessly, off lips that are used to the weight of words, know the pointy ends of them well enough from the blunt, and the fine-edged zone of absolute neutrality.

He hangs back, holds himself from offering so much as a shrug in response.

Tsukishima leans against the wall, joins Kunimi beneath the shelter and in the shade, languid, unhurried.

"Inconvenient," he mutters.

"Yeah," Kunimi agrees. "I don't have an umbrella."

"Me neither."

Kunimi shoots him a glance that hovers, vaguely, on the precipice of curiosity. He thinks, this Tsukishima doesn't seem like the kind of guy who'd leave home without an umbrella.

"Not all that smart, I guess," Kunimi murmurs, looking straight ahead. 

If he squints, he can make out the beginnings of a rainbow through the steady drizzle, peeking out from the grey rooftops.

Tsukishima says, eyebrow arched like a challenge, "You could run through the rain. It's not that bad."

"No thanks," says Kunimi, flatly.

He finishes typing his text and presses _send_.

> **_To: Kindaichi Yuutarou  
>  _ ** _it's raining. i'll be late._

As he slides his phone back into his pocket, he looks down at his watch. The second hand ticks on, inexorably, and the days, growing longer, stretch at their feet. The humidity in the air presses close, close as raindrops. Kunimi feels the slow burn of summer on his neck. 

Truth be told, he _could_ make a run for it, maybe. Kindaichi's house isn't that far away from the station. But then again, why bother?

Tsukishima's laugh is dry, his posture unmoving.

He doesn't bother elaborating further, or making small talk; he reaches up, unwinds his headphones and places them snug round his ears again, and Kunimi's almost a little bit envious of how easily he shuts out the world when he does that, how commanding and definite that gesture is.

He doesn't ask Kunimi what he's doing here in this neighbourhood, or what his plans are, and Kunimi doesn't pry either. It's none of his business.

They're not here, after all, to plunge, hotheaded, into _making a new friend_ or anything of the sort, just because they happen to be in the same place at the same time; that's not their style -

And they're not the sort to run in the rain, either.

 

 

"I met someone from Karasuno, at the station," Kunimi remarks, as an afterthought.

Kindaichi looks up. "Huh? Who?"

"Glasses guy."

" _Who_ \- oh, that one." Kindaichi furrows his brow in recollection. "He was tall."

"Yeah," says Kunimi. "And smart."

Kindaichi gapes. "I can't believe _you're_ calling someone else smart."

Kunimi shrugs, gives Kindaichi a blank sort of stare and turns his attention back to geometry.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He doesn't bump into Tsukishima again, the rest of the summer.

It's not like he expects to anyway. As August draws on, Kunimi ends up in school more often than not, because none of the third years have retired and Oikawa has an Ushijima-sized chip on his shoulder that anyone can see -

Well, that _Kunimi_ can see. And Iwaizumi, and the other third years too, no doubt.

("Is it just me," Kindaichi hisses under his breath, "or are we working _even harder_ during summer vacation than during term time?"

And Kunimi murmurs, "It's not just you.")

He's unsurprised, though, by any of these developments. Having a rival seems exhausting. _He's_ exhausted, sometimes, just watching Oikawa.

At other times, he is - perhaps, just a little bit - intrigued.

Because, over an accumulation of years, and months, at Kitagawa Daiichi and now here, Kunimi's seen more than enough to know that Oikawa has his hotheaded side, and this isn't it. There's a systematic rationality to what drives him - to be better - to be _best_ -

and in the moment, to be guided by a certain sort of feeling.

 

 

 

After particularly tough practices - inevitably, the ones where, Oikawa doesn't hesitate to point out in his unerring, relentless way, he doesn't slack _smart_ enough and gets called out - _rightly so_ too -

Kunimi takes a bus because he was too lazy to cycle, and wanders into the ice cream shop, calves still throbbing with a dull ache. It's crowded in the summertime, full of teenagers who aren't half as sweaty as he is, and, he's sure, less than half as tired.

For a split second, tantalising, he thinks: _I could be -_

The line moves, shuffles forward, slow and steady. 

Outside, the sun's still high. It streams in, casting speckled sunbeams on the wooden floor, and Kunimi watches people come and go.

He doesn't bother completing the thought.

There's no point in it. He's chosen this path for a reason, one that loops like a beat at the back of his mind, always.

When he reaches the front of the line, he orders a double scoop of salted caramel, and takes a shortcut home via the canal. Half the year round, it's pitch-dark by this time. But here and now, at the height of summer, the stones that line the banks on either side still glow, orange and burnished copper gleaming back at him as he walks by.

 

 

The tedium, the infinity of the season draws on, and Kunimi stops counting the days because they all blend into one long practice.

"Hey, I _heard_ \- "

Oikawa's voice lilts in that carefree fashion, one that Kunimi's come to associate with _gloss_. He does not stir, from where he's sitting, cross-legged on the floor with a water bottle in his hand; he listens.

"Karasuno's training in Tokyo."

Iwaizumi looks startled. "How did you hear that?"

"I have friends in many places," says Oikawa, enigmatic, and charming, in exactly the sort of way that does not work on Iwaizumi.

As Iwaizumi's eyes narrow, Kunimi takes a moment to assimilate this new piece of information.

_Tokyo._ It's a long way to go, just to train.

It seems, in all honesty, a reckless sort of thing to do -

or rather, the sort of thing you wouldn't do unless you were _really_ into volleyball. It's probably Kageyama's dream come true. But Kunimi knows well enough that not everyone on Karasuno's like that.

_Glasses-kun lacks resolve._

He wonders, briefly, if that's still the case.

He wonders again if it is true for himself as well.

 

 

 

As it turns out, it's disturbingly easy to feel like part of a team, when you're not constantly in a cold war with its star player. _with anyone_ , really, Kunimi supposes, when the thought occurs to him.

Sometimes, he smiles, and it's as genuine as he's ever felt.

Sometimes, he hears the adrenaline whisper in his veins.

It's a strange and unfamiliar sort of siren song, one that he's unused to, and there's something seductive in the promise, the possibilities.

Kunimi, dreaming of small victories, takes a half-step back and lets it gust past his cheek, sweep his fringe into his eyes so his gaze is obscured, the horizon broken into uneven lines.

And at times like this, the view comes together with a startling clarity.

His natural lassitude paints a mile-wide streak in his wake, and then it fades into the background, like a kind of music he's come to know well.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

"Trust?" says Tsukishima, a kind of query curling his lip that's not quite a sneer, not quite a smile.

Kunimi shrugs.

"Something like that," he says.

He knits his fingers together and gazes out at the game in progress. He's still wearing his jacket, camped safely in the bleachers away from the spotlights.

There's no coincidence in their meeting, this time. Kunimi, seeking a place in between games where he wouldn't be found by anyone, had wandered up to the stands, picking a spot furthest from the action all the way on the other side of the hall.

Somehow, he hadn't been surprised to see a blond, lanky figure with headphones on, perched right up in the top row.

Tsukishima hadn't looked all that startled to see him either.

" _Chib -_ , um, your number 10."

"Oh. Hinata," Tsukishima supplies in his laconic way, fiddling with his headphone jack.

"That's why they work. The freak combo. He has... an amazing amount of trust in Kageyama," Kunimi remarks. "You don't."

It's not a question. Nor is it, on the flipside, an accusation; Kunimi makes the statement, and Tsukishima shrugs.

He turns to Kunimi, throws it back at him without malice.

"Well, what about you?"

"No. I didn't," says Kunimi. He doesn't even need to think about it. "But that was then."

Tsukishima's gaze is sharp, a thread laced, unerringly, through the most particular of needles. His tone is quiet. It bites nonetheless.

"And now?" he asks. "Do you trust Oikawa?"

"No," says Kunimi, again, but the word sounds funny on his tongue. Like there's grit in the salt of it, rough and misplaced.

"It's not - " Kunimi starts, fades away into a _hmm_ , as Tsukishima, stretching out his long legs, props his ankles up on the empty row of chairs in front of them and leans back, resting his head in his cupped palms.

" _I_ wouldn't trust Oikawa," Tsukishima sniffs.

"Oikawa-san," says Kunimi, "trusts everyone _but_ himself. And Kageyama trusted no one _but_ himself. So."

It feels like a lot of words all at once for him, and Kunimi pauses, watches Tsukishima's face carefully. It's opaque, in the manner of opacity that is, in truth, completely transparent, if you knew where the light comes in.

Kunimi has something of an inkling.

He feels it stir within him, that same struggle for sensibility.

"So," Tsukishima picks up the trail of his thought.

"So Oikawa-san works to match us," Kunimi says.

Far below them, a set comes to a long, drawn-out conclusion, and the sound of the whistle blows. It's familiar, by now, the cadences and the rise and fall of this symphony; and Kunimi wouldn't lie to himself, isn't quite so heartless as to pretend that _winning_ and _losing_ don't matter to him, of course they _do_ , or he wouldn't have come back to volleyball. He wants to be on _that_ end of the court, the end that's smiling.

Looking at Tsukishima's simmering, level stare, he has a feeling that it's not just him.

"That's why it's not trust," Kunimi finishes, calmly. "I just know he'll give me the best toss. It's not anything so - sentimental."

_Although_ , Kunimi's faintly aware, Oikawa would probably say there was something more to his invincibility; something that transcended all of his considered attempts at distillation.

"Kageyama. He's - " Tsukishima mutters, and stops short.

Kunimi's gaze flicks over, down again. He presses his fingers together, closer, and thinks of ambient beats.

"He's changed, probably. From how you knew him."

Tsukishima's wearing a furrow in his brow like it physically pains him to say that.

Kunimi smiles.

"Yeah," he says. "I guess people can change."

Tsukishima eyes him, contemplative.

Kunimi props his head up in both of his hands, lets out a quiet sigh and thinks, they'll have to get moving soon. Or Kindaichi will come looking for him, or worse, Iwaizumi, and then he'll really be in for it. 

He can only hope they're too busy wrangling Kyoutani into submission to bother with him. He always shows up when he's needed, after all, and he's, if not spectacular, at least dependable.

"Your number 10 is... _special_ ," Kunimi adds.

He turns the word almost inside-out in his mouth, lets his smile goes wry when he says it, and Tsukishima, from the way his eyebrow arches, easily reads between the double-edged lines of that comment.

"You're not like him. I'm not like him. We'll never be Kageyama's perfect partners. But I think there are other things we can do."

Tsukishima adjusts his glasses, unfolds himself limb by limb.

In the tilt of his head, Kunimi thinks he catches a fiery glint that wasn't there before.

 

 

* * *

 

 

There are times, in the second set, when they both find themselves on the bench.

Karasuno's other setter, the one Oikawa calls _Refreshing-kun_ , gets substituted in, and Tsukishima takes his number _11_ paddle with a calm equanimity that betrays nothing.

As Tsukishima sits down, takes a bottle of water from their manager with a small nod and drinks deep, Kunimi turns his attention back to the game.

Kyoutani's a hot mess. Oikawa's visibly irritated. Kindaichi just looks, mostly, confused.

Kunimi sits back into the momentary respite, listens to Yahaba's constant, apoplectic hand-wringing, takes in all of Kyoutani's raw displays of power and thinks, again, that hotheaded guys are really tiring.

He bides his time. So, too, does Tsukishima, on the other side.

They watch with a twinned focus, evenly matched.

 

 

 

**_ambient (part 1)_ **

 

When Tsukishima steps back on the court, Kunimi sees it immediately.

The keenness of his gaze, piercing, _true_ , and it's child's play for someone like him to get under Kyoutani's skin, block the reckless swing of his spike with a second's stratagem.

Then he's up to serve, and Karasuno turns it around.

 

 

In the sweltering still air of the gym, through the heated shouts, the spiralling crescendo of cheering and clapping and sudden hushed silences, there it is -

That insistent beat, ice-smooth and chill against the pale pulse of his skin.

In the end, Kunimi only gets a handful of moments on the court while Kyoutani cools his head. He sizes the situation up at a glance. Tsukishima's in the back of the rotation.  

Quietly, efficiently, he drops a tip over the net, and just as quietly, he slips out of the game again as it starts to heat up.

 

 

(There's always time for everything -   
so he reminds himself, letting the thought sink into his mind as he waits it out.)

 

 

Later, there'll be all kinds of regrets, and there'll be patience of a different sort.

There are tears running down Kindaichi's face. That's the first thing Kunimi notices, _thinks_ to notice, really, because Kindaichi's always been like that after a loss.

He is helpless, doesn't have the words to comfort, as always.

And then he sees Yahaba, lips pressed in a thin line, and Watari with his face in his hands, and Iwaizumi turns away with his fists clenched so tight by his side that the veins in his forearms pop.

Kunimi's breath comes shallowly. He thinks: _well._

Outside, the sun is bright. There's the faintest trace of blue through the skylight in the corners, and the local TV cameras have flocked over to the Karasuno side of the gym, and Kunimi can hear _Chibi-chan_ shouting all the way from here.

Tomorrow's another day.

 

 

 

**_ambient (part 0)  
_ ** **_or; the countdown to something else_ **

 

Karasuno goes to Nationals, and Kunimi watches their debut match on the Orange Court, on tape, over and over again, first in the TV they haul into the club room, and then at Oikawa's house because he insists on it.

At least Oikawa's pulled it together, moved past his regrets and that stage of _it could have been us, should have been us_ , because Shiratorizawa had been, quite frankly, terrifying, and even Oikawa is hard-pressed to say that they would have beaten Ushijima and his team, on that day.

"The _vibe_ was - "

"Hey, Oikawa, how do _you_ know what the vibe was, hmmm?" Hanamaki asks, leaning closer like he's trying to pry out a secret, with nothing but his grin as a weapon.

"Because he was there," says Iwaizumi, flatly. "We were there."

" _Iwa-chan!_ " Oikawa exclaims, at the same time Hanamaki slumps, says, with a _hmph_ , "You take all the fun out of it, Iwaizumi."

Kunimi wraps his hands round his hot lemon tea and exchanges a tired look with Kindaichi as he leans forward, rests his head on the table.

"Oikawa-san," he ventures, "don't you have exams - "

"Be quiet, Kunimi-chan! Pay attention! Right _here_."

And Kunimi does, because even before Oikawa explains it, he catches on quick, sees exactly what he's supposed to.

"I know. The run-up and timing of the jump."

" _Exactly_ ," says Oikawa. "If you do it like this, you save even more energy."

Kindaichi speaks up. "I don't - "

Oikawa smiles, indulgent. "It's not for you, Kindaichi. Only someone like Kunimi-chan should try it."

And before Kindaichi gets any ideas, Kunimi mutters, just loud enough for them to hear, "Because I slack off."

Oikawa raps him on the top of his head.

"Because you play _smart_. Don't forget, _okay_ , when I'm gone? That's your greatest weapon."

"Yes," says Kunimi, obediently.

"Your next assignment," Oikawa announces, grandiose, "should you choose to accept it, is - "

He gestures at the TV with a flourish, a determined glare in his eyes, like there's something on it that's personally offended him. Probably Kageyama. Likely Kageyama.

"How you would get past Glasses-kun's block - _here_."

With an exacting precision that tells Kunimi just how many times he's watched this video, Oikawa hits pause on a pivotal break point, right when Karasuno's opponents, from Gunma-ken, smash a ball into the waiting curve of Tsukishima's fingertips.

Iwaizumi's tone is full of a grudging admiration when he says, "The glasses kid is getting scarily good at blocking."

Kunimi ponders the scenario, stirs his mind from its wintry hibernation.

"Play it again, please," he says, and Oikawa does.

 

 

What Kunimi notices is:

Glasses-kun certainly doesn't lack resolve any more.

Then again, it's not like he hadn't already noticed that. It had played itself out in his every word, every minute twist of his lip and movement of his feet, his shoulders, deliberate and provocative.

That's something beyond just bare _skill_ , and sometimes, Kunimi doesn't know if he can match that.

But when he steps up, every bit the _wing spiker_ , he's there to attack; and the thing about _tsukishima kei_ , maker of ambient playlists, is that _kunimiakira13_ , listener, silent lurker, runs parallel to every loop and scratch of his vinyl tracks, and even as they peel apart, they fall back again into the same kind of rhythm.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

In a break from tradition, they had brushed past each other -

Not at the watercooler, but in the tumult of the coach parking lot, amid a hurried rush of goodbyes, silent tears and lingering looks. 

Kunimi had hung back, mostly to avoid any of that, and having to carry stuff. He had taken his time, going to the toilet, washing his face. Sweeping back his hair, changing out of his kit, zipping up his jacket, even though it wasn't the least bit cold outside. 

When he set foot on the asphalt, shielded his eyes against the setting sun and made his way to the waiting Seijou bus, he'd heard a voice call his name. 

"Kunimi," like a quiet command, and he turned.

Tsukishima, hands in his pockets, headphones round his neck, stood with the light reflected off his face, gaze intent behind his dark-framed lenses. 

He'd raised his chin, asked a question of Kunimi.

"Why do you play?"

And in the gravity of it, Kunimi had felt, certain and heavy as his loss: that Tsukishima had been asking himself this question for a while now. Perhaps he'd found his answer.

Kunimi had always known his, never spoken it out loud even in the recesses of his mind, but now -

Listening and ready, the words had come to his lips, and the single, staccato beat of them burned in its simplicity.

"Because I'm good."

That was all there was to it.

Tsukishima smirked.

"Bring it next time, then," he'd said, in a voice thick with approval, and Kunimi had smiled as he turned to walk away.

 

 

* * *

 

 

There's always time for _salted caramel_ , and night sounds that go down like iced tea, and even, perhaps, in the years to come, the electric-bright spark of their encounters, moments of sentimentality and running in the drizzle, if not the rain.

 

 

 


End file.
